Stacey Rees’s Abstract Female Portraits Capture a Moment of Inner Contemplation

In her previous works, the Australian painter Stacey Rees seemed to be captivated by the strange and modern notion of the selfie. Her portraits explored the idea that people can define their self-worth by the public face they show to the world and that people can, in fact, manipulate those images for a better outcome. What comprised the inner life of those who swore by such digital machinations, she seemed to ask? In her new body of work, which was on view this month at the Sydney gallery Saint Cloche, Rees appears to sink even deeper into the stillness of contemplation.

03.01.10

The Making of

Welcome to Vörland, by Reed Young

Reed Young’s photography career has taken him from a sumo wrestler’s home in Tokyo to the sugarcane fields of the Dominican Republic to the halls of Fabrica, the Benetton-owned creative lab for young talent in Treviso, Italy. But he probably wouldn’t have gotten to any of those places if he hadn’t faked his way into art school. At 17 and a middling student at a Minneapolis senior high, Young, now 27, borrowed a photography portfolio from a friend and was accepted into his hometown’s prestigious Perpich Center for Arts Education on its merits. “When I arrived, I think they found it a bit strange that I didn’t know the difference between an aperture and a shutter speed,” he says.